Theodore Kim and Mary Beth Schneider have a decent run down of where things stand with the legislature as of this morning. My only criticism is that they end the article with the gratuitous and incorrect statement: “The legislature cannot adjourn without passing a budget.” The General Assembly shouldn’t and it probably won’t. But itcan. As the Indiana Law Blog has been instrumental in pointing out, there is no constitutional or other legal requirement that the legislature pass a budget. There will be hell to pay if they don’t, but adjourning without a budget is within the bounds of things that can be done. Why reporters continue to suggest that there is some sort of prohibition against adjourning without passing a budget is mind boggling to me.
But, that’s just one sentence. The rest of the article is good. It looks like the cigarette tax will be increased to pay for health care. “The plan — first announced by Gov. Mitch Daniels in the fall — has gone through many changes, including last-minute additions to give tax credits to help businesses offer health insurance to workers and to let employees use pre-tax dollars to pay for their premiums.”
Property tax relief appears to be tied to expansion of gambling. Casino expansion has been removed from the discussion, but horse tracks will be able to offer slots if they pay for a license. The license payments will be used to fund some sort of property tax relief.
The budget is getting closer to a deal:
House and Senate leaders, at the request of Democrats, agreed to axe $21 million in funding for two online virtual charter schools slated to open this fall. In exchange, Democrats withdrew their demands for a moratorium on new charter schools in 2008-09.
Gov. Mitch Daniels and House Democratic leaders also agreed on a roughly $1 billion appropriation for road construction over the next two years. The appropriation had been a sticking point.
The General Assembly should adjourn sine die by midnight tonight. If they conclude business without doing something the Governor considers critical — like, for example, pass a budget — he can call them into a special session. At the special session, the General Assembly is not particularly required to follow the Governor’s agenda. They can do more or less than he requests during such a session. At this point, a special session appears unlikely. To my friends at the Legislative Services Agency, I sincerely hope I have not jinxed the process.
With the legislators considering sending out property tax rebate checks “so that people will know where the check is coming from” it would be really nice for the statement to continue to give the main reason for the increase in property taxes—courtesy of the legislature: “Your property taxes went up because of the following action on the part of your legislators in past years when we took action to: a) passed a higher one year homestead credit to make us look good in an election year; b)established trending in such a manner that shifted the taxation from commercial to residental; c)did not allow local units to shift to other forms of taxation; d) did away with the inventory taxes on businesses thus again shifting taxes to residential; c) and continued to mandate local units such as schools, counties, and cities/towns to do things without any funding from us.”
Bet the accompanying letter with any rebate (if that method is used rather than simply fund the check to 92 counties and let them distribute the funds to other units) will wholly place the credit for the relief with the legislators.
Not trying to discredit our legislators but just wish as a local official could get some honest respect and acceptance of credit by our legislators.
I tend to agree. The tax rebate check idea seems pretty cynical to me now just as it did when they sent them out during the Bush federal tax cuts. It seems based on the idea that people aren’t smart enough to really add and subtract and figure out whether they’re coming out ahead or behind. Instead, they’ll just feel like “HEY MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT! HOORAY!” and forget about the bigger picture. I’m not saying they’re wrong to think that a lot of citizens will react in just this way. Still, it seems cynical.